I'm looking at revamping my "Boo Camp" actor training course (as I do each year) and wanted to get feedback from haunt owners and actors. What are some of the more common problems your actors faced during the course of a season and how were the best ways to deal with them? Any type of problem is welcome, from unruly patrons to bad working conditions to uncooperative fellow actors, etc...

the haunt I worked at had a number of assaults from the stilt walker having his legs swept out from under him to outright physical attacks on the actors. I personally had the problem of an animatronic constantly breaking down and trying to troubleshoot between customers. And quite a few customers would enter areas not intended and I think all of us actors were looking for a way to redirect them without breaking character.

Of the problems you just mentioned, how many of them stemmed from chemicals, alcohol and others?
I believe if all the sloppy, screaming, swearing drunks could be eliminated from the customer-side of the event that our life and time spent doing what we do would be 300% better.
Problem solved! Build a haunted bar scene and allow the drunks to sit in there doing their "thing". Of course have no path accessesable between the haunt and this scene.
The Bartender could be a pink elephant the nudie painting above the bar could feature a huge snake with a feathered "Boa" no human, just the reptile.

most of the ot drunks were escorted out, the assaults I've mentioned above were people set out to deliberately hurt the actors. In three of these incidents the ppl were detained and w/o having submitted them to drug tests appeared not to be under the influence. I'm quite positive the animatronic that broke down was on angel dust and the idea of a nudie painting of a boa gives me a strange tingley feeling I'll have to discuss w/my therapist. Drunks and jerks go w/the territory of the haunt business I guess.

LOL at the bar scene thing..... GREAT idea! I nearly spit out my oatmeal laughing at that!

We run into the problem of our actors committing to help for an evening then no showing. I suppose being a volunteer type thing, there's no way around that, but its hard to scramble someone to fill that spot sometimes. I think we need some better backup planning this year on our part and possibly incorporating an audition to screen out some of the less serious ones.

How important it is to listen to your higher ups. Seriously, if your manager tells you an actor to do something and you don't listen...sounds like common sense but! I'm sure you know.

How to deal with unintentional bumps and tackles...Well now that I think about it...a lesson on training your actors onto how to observe and look at their enviorment for either safety hazards, set pieces that are unsafe to have weight on them, etc. OH and don't forget about fire exits and drills.

Weapons right infront of you, objects that a goof-ball customer could pick up and hit with or throw at someone, Everything wired down? Screwed down? Any real knives, axes should be very well secured if used at all.
Smearing some grease on a mask to keep patrons from handling it will result in that grease being wiped on the nearest wall.
Give them a bag of suiveneer dirt will see that bag thrown in your face at the next scare or just dirt found all over the place.(I was trying to get the customers to help me carry the dirt away from digging out more of the basement. Later an art gallery 30 miles away used the same gimmick as a promo for their opening, I wonder how they thought of that?)

Badger,
I met you in Atlanta, and you're a big guy like me. All of these issues with drunks, etc seem to happen more with smaller actors! Perhaps the more intense scenes with in your face actors should be older, larger actors, that know how to handle themselves? Just a thought for some tips....

my problem, or the actors, is that some of the actors get so annoying:
when does it end
im tired
but its people, let em' be
ect, it gets sooo anoying, and most of the time this is about 5-10 min, into opening

I Agree! To stay on topic, actors who don't know how to read the crowd and individual groups and body language is ridiculously annoying. The kids who keep bothering the patrons when they clearly aren't scared is a waste of their time. YOU don't have to be SCARY, you have to be ENTERTAINMENT. So if you aren't scaring, you can be entertaining! =)